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“God is good”, you hear people say when things go their way, as though this mythological entity of questionable existence has allegedly made the decision to intervene and bestow moments of goodness in the lives of a blessed, chosen few. I don’t believe that God exists, but if I did, I would probably agree with my late mother, who – robbed by ALS of her ability to speak or eat – confided in me last year (using a text-to-speech app on the iPad that never left her side) that she believed in God, but that she did not believe he was benevolent. Less than six weeks later, she was gone – taken not by the ALS, but rather by an exceptionally aggressive bout with ovarian cancer that took us all by surprise and turned our world upside down.

It is difficult for me to accept the notion of a deity who may be charitably benevolent under extraordinarily mundane circumstances, while denying that same benevolence to others – even when lives are at stake. How can your God be good if he is seemingly charitable on a whim, yet indifferent – sometimes brutally – to suffering? If God existed, why would he rally behind you to ensure that you get something relatively trivial, while at the same time suddenly take the life of a father of three young children, a father who lost his own father only two weeks earlier? What kind of “good” God does something like that?

Your God is not good when refugees are suspiciously seen as terrorists instead of victims of war.

Your God is not good when hate so often seems to be on the verge of trumping love, when there are those who judge people by the color of their skin, their religion, their country of origin or their sexual orientation.

Your God is not good when he drowns a family in grief and then plunges them in even deeper, or when he seals a woman’s fate with one terrifyingly crushing disease but destroys her with another.

And do not speak to me of your God’s master plan or tell me that everything happens for a reason, for I can think of no valid reason for your God to wreak such havoc and devastation. I can think of no sane reason for children to suffer the heart-shattering loss of their father while grieving the loss of their grandfather, or for their grandmother to bury her husband and son within two weeks of one another. I find no comfort in master plans of bilious darkness or senseless loss, in destructive chaos and stolen innocence. If there is a comfort to be found, it is in the beauty of selfless deeds and acts of kindness; it is in the love we share and the space we hold for others in times of need – or in the space they hold for us.

If your God was truly good, I would like to think that he would not be so selective in his benevolence. I believe in benevolence, but I do not believe in God. Instead, I choose the tangible goodness of friends, loved ones and strangers. It is these blessed beings who truly accompany us during our journey, celebrating our joys and supporting us through our sorrows, helping to collect the shards of broken lives strewn about amidst a clutter of unanswered prayers.

Tattered and torn – we’re ripped at the seams
With horrible nightmares replacing the dreams
Except here’s the thing – you’re really awake
And it seems like the world is just ready to break

But all you can do is watch as it falls
Because no one’s prepared to heed any calls
We’re sinking in deeper – we’re all going down
Because no one’s prepared to make any sound

As the world starts to crash – we shatter to bits
We’re breaking apart taking hit after hit
The prognosis is bleak – there isn’t much hope
The world is hanging itself with a rope

Do you see all the hatred that people are spewing?
That we can’t seem to stop all the harm that we’re doing?
That so much of the good’s overshadowed by bad?
And it’s ever so clear that the world has gone mad

When I gave birth to the Little One, I almost died. The pregnancy itself had been a difficult one. Questionable genetics combined with a bad obstetric history (and that would be putting it mildly) dictated that I would be watched carefully, and that we would always err on the side of caution. Once we cleared the initial genetic hurdles, I found myself faced with such issues as the unexpected discovery at week 16 of an incompetent cervix (resulting in urgent surgery to put in a cerclage and me working from home for the remainder of the pregnancy) and the subsequent diagnosis of gestational diabetes. To make matters worse, I was utterly depressed. Despite the fact that the pregnancy was progressing relatively decently – if not smoothly, the fear that something would somehow go horribly wrong was never far from my mind. Four failed pregnancies led me to believe that the odds were not in my favor, which meant that I basically spent my entire pregnancy holding my breath and waiting for something to go wrong.

Nothing in my wildest dreams – or nightmares – could have prepared me for what I experienced when I gave birth. The bleeding began once my son was out, and it simply wouldn’t stop. The placenta wasn’t coming out and my uterus wasn’t contracting as it should have. In short, I was hemorrhaging. I suddenly felt weak and sick, and as the blood drained from my face and I turned white, I heard my husband pleading with me to stay awake.

As the medical team worked feverishly to get my body to do what it was supposed to, I was consumed by sheer terror; I was sure that I was dying, and even began to think about my husband having to raise our son as a single parent. An anesthesiologist was hovering outside the room, ready to rush me into surgery in the event that the doctors wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding, which would have necessitated the removal of my uterus in order to save my life. Fortunately, we didn’t reach that stage. The doctors managed to stop the bleeding, employing a number of often painful techniques and persevering until it worked. I received four units each of blood and plasma, and was hooked up to oxygen after they discovered that my oxygen saturation levels were low. I remained in the delivery room for approximately twelve hours after giving birth, at which point I was moved to a room in the maternity ward that was directly across from the nurses’ station.

While the doctors in the hospital refused to discuss it, my own doctor confirmed what I already assumed to be true. My life had been in danger, and I could have died. While the birth itself had been fairly routine, my condition deteriorated rapidly within an hour. There was no indication that what I had experienced was in any way related to the problems I’d had during the pregnancy. What had happened to me could happen to anyone, without any prior warning.

And that’s why I was so utterly appalled by this article in last Friday’s Haaretz Magazine about unassisted home births. Don’t get me wrong – I can certainly respect that there are some women who are turned off by the hospital experience, or that some women wish to give birth naturally and with no painkillers (I, on the other hand, informed the nurses every ten minutes or so that without an epidural, I wouldn’t give birth…). I also realize that most births tend to proceed as they should, and that complications are minimal. But what about those few births that go wrong, those births that go so spectacularly off course that the lives of the mother and and/or the baby are in danger? What do you do when you’re giving birth alone in your bathroom and your baby won’t come out? What do you do when the bleeding just won’t stop?

I was shocked by the women in the article, angered by what I perceived as being ignorance and misguided priorities. Isn’t it more important to survive a birth procedure that might not be precisely to your liking than to die as a result of the “perfect” birthing experience? I realize that given my own background, I may not be the best person to judge. Perhaps I am overly sensitive when it comes to such issues, but I cannot help becoming incensed by women who naively believe that nothing can happen, that despite all of the medical technology placed at our disposal, they are prepared to turn their backs on modernity in the most extreme manner possible. Some of you will condemn me for being judgmental, and I accept that there’s truth in that. I just cannot help but think that had I chosen this path, my son would not have a mother.

The world has truly become a theater of the absurd when Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad is considered a welcome guest at the UN-sponsored conference on racism that opens today in Geneva. Of course, the conference itself promises to make a mockery of the very concepts of the ideals that it purports to be combating, given that in all likelihood, it will once again turn into an anti-Semitic Israel-bashing session similar to that which occurred during the previous UN racism conference, held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa.

There’s no question that racism exists in Israel, and anyone who says otherwise is, at best, naïve. Our track record with regard to Arab-Israelis is dismal, and at times, our treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has left me feeling utterly ashamed and mortified. However – and that would be a huge however, Israel is by no means the worst offender. Israelis do not go on violent rampages whenever Judaism or Israel are insulted, we do not burn down embassies of those who offend us. We cry foul when virulently anti-Semitic cartoons are published in newspapers, but we do not threaten the lives of the artists or the newspaper editors. Our leaders do not make it a habit of demanding that other countries be wiped off the map, and if they did, I daresay they would not be asked to address conferences dedicated to fighting racism.

What kind of legitimacy can be granted to such a conference when the leader of one of the most repressive, fanatic regimes in the world uses the conference podium for the singular purpose of vilifying another country? How can we expect the outcome of “Durban 2” to be any different from the outcome of the previous conference, given the sadly predictable nature of Ahmadinejad’s speech earlier today? The walkout by Western delegates means very little – a pathetic show of symbolism that does nothing to lessen the hypocrisy of giving the Iranian president a platform in the first place. The very act of allowing him to speak has destroyed any remaining notions of conference credibility, and anyone who believes otherwise is setting themselves up for disappointment. There can be neither credibility nor legitimacy in such an atmosphere of hate and intolerance, nor can any true solutions be found. And needless to say, having one of the world’s most outspoken Holocaust deniers addressing a global racism conference on Holocaust Remembrance Day pretty much says it all, really.

Several years ago, a good friend of mine found herself walking the streets of London during the early morning hours, trying to convince a Palestinian she’d met that his understanding of Zionist ideology was based on a definition that she, as someone living in Israel, simply could not share, that his views were based on what she considered to be a distortion of Zionism that played into the beliefs of Israel’s religious right. She went on to explain that there is no single definition that meets the ideological values of all individuals who identify as Zionists, and that her brand of Zionism would most likely be more palatable to him than the narrow definition of what he believed Zionism to be, which she could not identify with at all.

Like my friend, I’ve grown increasingly frustrated by the notion that Zionism is assumed to embody only the beliefs of the religious right, and I am incensed by those who believe that neither secular nor left-leaning Jews can truly be Zionists. For far too many non-Israelis who obtain their news in three-minute bursts from CNN and the BBC, the terms “Zionist” and “settler” are interchangeable. They have never heard of my Zionism, a secular Zionism that encompasses a desire to live in a Jewish democratic homeland – a homeland built on Jewish history and culture, enabling its inhabitants to live as they wish without religious coercion or prejudice; a homeland whose geographical boundaries allow for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, because my vision of Zionism does not allow my self-determination for a Jewish state to negate the existence of another people.

My beliefs seem to place me in the minority among many of my fellow Jews (I’ve been called everything from “self-hating Jew” to a traitor whom the Israeli government must decide whether or not to lock up), and I have often found myself in a position of having to explain secular Zionist beliefs to people abroad who have been led to believe that Israel is comprised almost solely of religious, right wing zealots who support a Greater Israel and have no idea that any other viewpoints exist – a possibility made even more difficult to fathom following the recent elections, where Israel’s right-wing parties won 65 out of 120 Knesset seats and a far right party whose slogan “Without loyalty, no citizenship” won the third largest number of seats (15), running on a platform that rankled the nerves of many Israelis.

I have been dismayed to discover just how little people know about the real Israel, where a majority of Jewish citizens (44 percent, according to a government survey conducted in 2004) define themselves as being secular (with an additional 39 percent defining themselves as being traditionally observant and just 17 percent identifying as either Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox). Given these figures, combined with the fact that the founders of both the modern Zionist movement and the state of Israel were primarily secular, it appears as though Zionism in its original form has been hijacked to meet the needs of a narrow array of interest groups. Those of us who believe otherwise are left to wonder who distorted our ideology to such an extent that we are often loathe to claim a connection, not wanting to be mistakenly identified with ideals with which we do not agree.

This grave distortion of the core values on which Israel was created has served us badly in the global arena. Citizens of other countries believe us to be war mongers-something that’s become harder to deny in light of the recent conflict in Gaza-and I’ve lost track of the number of websites I’ve seen where writers and commenters claim that we are intent on wiping out the Palestinian population in order to fulfill our Zionist aspirations, turning “Zionism” and “Zionist” into dirty, obscene terms that they were never intended to become. In addition, as a result of the reinforced, distorted perception that religion must play a key role in the Zionist ideology, the lines between anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism have become increasingly blurred. Detractors use their criticism of Israel as a springboard for anti-Semitism by drawing on classic examples of anti-Semitic imagery to further their case against Israel and Zionism.

Of course, there will always be critics. There will be those who will never accept Zionism in any of its forms. There will also be those who strongly believe that we, as Jews and as Israelis, should not allow ourselves to even think about the opinions of others, that we do not have to take anyone or anything else into account on our path to self-determination as a people, and that our religion gives us the right to do so. There are those who might be persuaded to change their views about Zionism if they could only move past the stereotypes and misnomers to see another side of the situation, and there are those who feel the need to somehow show these people the way. In my capacity as a writer, I try to show readers that Zionism is a complex, often intensely personal concept with many different faces. Sometimes, though, I suspect my words are falling on deaf ears; after all, I am not the face of Zionism they expect to find. I am left-wing and I am secular. I am a Zionist.

There is something you need to understand. I, along with many other Israelis, am disturbed by the loss of so many innocent Palestinian lives. The situation is not a simple one, and the rules of war are not so easy to follow when one side purposely chooses to endanger its own population. In an ideal war, if one can say such a thing, armies would battle other armies, and do their utmost to ensure that civilians are not in harm’s way. Israel now finds itself in the unenviable, untenable situation of not only having its own citizens targeted, but also having an enemy (and by enemy I mean Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza, not the Palestinian civilians) that has actively and shamelessly chosen to fight from a position of using its entire civilian population as human shields. Despite Israel’s actions, it would not be unreasonable to say that Israel cared more about the Palestinian civilian population than the Hamas leadership does. That being said, because Hamas fights dirty, does that mean that Israel should not fight at all? What would be considered an acceptable amount of time for Israel to be held hostage by the whims and fantasies of a band of well-armed terrorists who are prepared to fight to the death – the unrealistic death of Israel and the death of their own civilian population?

It should be obvious by now that whenever Hamas wants something, whether it be something from Israel or the international community, or whether they are simply trying to find a cause around which to rally and unite their own people, the method they always opt for is to escalate the violence against Israel. They goad and push until Israel feels it can no longer exercise restraint. The scenario that unfolds is predictable and painful, inevitably more so for the weaker side. Sanctions haven’t worked, nor have ceasefires. Hamas will not recognize Israel and they have repeatedly stated their desire to continue the current fighting. They seem to be under the misconception that they can “win”, and unless their idea of winning is watching Israel turn Gaza into a mass grave for innocent Palestinian civilians, they surely must understand that a victory over Israel is not going to happen. Their vows to continue this dangerous folly and not give in clearly prove how they have utterly abandoned their own people.

And when you ask whether the Israeli government has hesitated about sending in ground troops because of the losses that would be incurred, the answer is yes. Obviously, it’s not the only reason, but it’s certainly a factor. Unlike the Hamas leadership, the Israeli leadership feels a responsibility toward its own citizens, whether they be soldiers or civilians. It is horribly, horribly unfortunate that Hamas does not feel the same responsibility. Or rather, perhaps they do, but only when the dead Palestinian in question is a high-ranking member of Hamas. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, and the only death that has raised the ire of the Hamas leadership is that of senior Hamas official Nizar Ghayan, assassinated in a pinpoint attack by Israeli forces yesterday.

So, where does that leave Israel? Everyone is full of suggestions for what Israel should not be doing right now, but no one seems to be able to come up with any ideas for what we should be doing. We are condemned for applying sanctions, we are condemned for closing border crossings. We are asked to show restraint when Hamas decides it is no longer interested in a ceasefire (and may I remind you that during this ceasefire, the odd rocket was occasionally fired into Israel), demonstrating their resolve by firing more than 100 rockets into Sderot and other southern communities in the days leading up to the ceasefire’s expiration date and the immediate days that followed. How would you expect your government to act if rockets were raining down on your town?

With regard to citizens remaining in these communities under fire, while many have left, others simply cannot afford to go. Their whole lives are there – homes, family, jobs. Many of them do not have jobs. Unemployment in these peripheral areas is high and money is tight. Even in good times, the economy in Israel’s periphery was never thriving, so try to imagine how much worse it must be now. And there is another issue that must be factored in. Should the government be setting a precedent of emptying entire towns? Hamas has shown that they are capable of reaching locations that are farther and farther away from Gaza. Should those towns be emptied as well? Do we just bow to the will of Hamas and allow them to dictate where in sovereign Israel we can and cannot live? To do so would be outrageous.

As for Israel’s borders being secure, I believe most Israelis would say that our borders are only as secure as the strength of our military or the resolve of our neighbors. Hezbullah’s rocket fire and subsequent incursion and abduction of soldiers in the summer of 2006 triggered a war. Gilad Shalit was serving on a base within Israel when he was kidnapped and taken to Gaza. And border fences can only go so high. The repeated firing of rockets over the border from Gaza is what led to the Israel’s decision to fight back on more than one occasion.

I wish that innocent Gazans did not have to die, and I wish that their leaders felt as much compassion for these deaths as many Israelis do. I wish there was another way, but sadly, I don’t think there is, not now. As an Israeli, I am not prepared to sacrifice my own life, the life of my child, my family, my friends or my fellow citizens in order to keep the population of Gaza safe. Sometimes, it is simply not enough to want peace and quiet, to want to believe that we can achieve these goals. We cannot live in peace as long as Hamas holds us all hostage, leaving us no room to compromise and no choice but to fight.

As far as I’m concerned, they can all go to hell, those bleeding-heart armchair warriors abroad who are far too busy to condemn Hamas when Israel shows restraint in the face of thousands of rockets and missiles, yet don’t hesitate to cry foul when Israel dares to defend itself and protect its citizens. Hypocrites the lot, as you conveniently ignore the truly one-sided atrocities of the world, preferring to save your venom solely for Israel. What of the ongoing tragic situation in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe is literally allowing his own people to starve to death? Where were your raucous demonstrations against the Russians when they invaded Georgia Ukraine, or against the Turks when they attack the Kurds? Where is the mad dash for the podium at the UN, the queue of ambassadors patiently awaiting their turns to condemn the leaders of these rogue nations, in the voice that you have seemingly reserved for your blindingly one-sided condemnations of Israel?

Hundreds of Palestinians killed is indeed a tragedy. You condemn the asymmetry with regard to the numbers of casualties, but it is certainly not for lack of trying. Perhaps you would be happier with a more proportionate response; perhaps you’d prefer if the citizens of Sderot and the South had responded by firing rockets into Gazan cities, but I suspect not. After all, you must think, what are a few rockets that wreak more havoc and anxiety than physical pain and death? Surely, you say, these rockets are merely an inconvenience because they rarely kill. Suffice it to say that I would not wish it upon your towns and cities to have your lives defined by the whims of a few rocket-launchers, dictating your every thought, your every movement. I would not wish it upon you to feel the mind-numbing fear of the parents who do not know exactly where there children are when the alarm is sounded, when the missiles scream overhead before slamming into the ground in deafening, bone-chilling explosion. I would not wish it upon you to explain to your children why they spend their childhood in sealed rooms and reinforced buildings, living in a town where two-thirds of the young people are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of growing up in the shadow of rocket fire, rockets which seemingly have a penchant for falling precisely at the hour when children are making their way to school.

And lest you forget, these rockets have been falling for more than eight years – more than 8,000 of them (and counting). I’m guessing that you can’t even imagine what that must be like, nor have you even tried. It is more convenient to ignore the rockets, to place the blame for the current situation squarely on Israel’s shoulders, as though Israel woke up one day and decided to have an unprovoked go at the neighbors. The selective memory of the world is mind-blowing, in one fell swoop utterly obliterating any responsibility on the part of the Palestinians for the devastating situation in which they find themselves. It is not the Israelis’ fault that the Hamas leadership cares more about making the Israelis suffer than about the ongoing suffering of its own people. It is not the Israelis’ fault that Hamas is more than willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent Palestinians while aspiring to a goal that they will never be able to achieve – the destruction of Israel. Yet, you continue to excuse their actions, time and time again. You prefer us to remain quiet and contrite, licking our wounds in silence, expecting us to accept this and all punishments in the name of the occupation, as though our citizens in the south should be amenable to having their daily lives destroyed as some outrageous form of collective repentance.

The events of the past few days have been unfortunately predictable, and while it is certainly a tragedy that there are innocent civilians among the casualties, it is imperative to remember that the Hamas leadership purposely chose to impose this situation on its own people by opting to ignore the hints and warnings repeatedly issued by the Israeli government. It was Hamas who chose to destroy the ceasefire and gamble with the lives of its citizens by escalating the rocket fire into Israel, knowing full well that if they continued to do so, Israel would retaliate and many Gazans would probably die. Sadly, they have, and unless Hamas decides that saving their people is a more important goal than trying to kill ours, these numbers will continue to rise. The blood will be on the hands of Hamas, who knowingly and repeatedly chose to sacrifice their own.

Prime Minister Olmert, despite your obvious shortcomings and your proclivity towards questionably ethical activity, I wanted to believe that you carried at least a modicum of intelligence and a sense of responsibility towards and respect for the office of the Prime Minister, but with each passing day, you are going out of your way to prove me wrong. You, Mr. Prime Minister, are a lame duck whose days in the Prime Minister’s chair are numbered. You have lost both the support and the respect of the nation and even of your fellow party members in Kadima; you have lost your mandate to make critical decisions. And yet, despite all that you have going against you, you continue in your mind-boggling attempts to retain control and throw your weight around, bullying your colleagues in a disturbing portrayal of one-upmanship of which we are all ashamed.

Have you no respect for yourself or the government that you claim to represent, Sir? How do you sleep at night; how do you look yourself in the mirror knowing that every Israeli citizen believes you are going out of your way to demonstrate that not only will you be dragged from the Prime Minister’s office kicking and screaming, but that you are also not afraid to take your entire party down with you? We are no longer your public, and we have lost all faith in your ability to lead. At the very least, we had hoped and expected you to accept this situation that you have created for yourself and would bow out gracefully, allowing your successor to take her rightful place as leader of a transitional government, allowing her to try to prove her worth prior to the upcoming elections. We had hoped that your obvious acrimony towards the Foreign Minister would be put aside for the good of your party, that you would be a gentleman and do what you could to ensure a smooth transition, but clearly, you have chosen to be selfish and petty, to hold on to your seat until the last possible moment. And for what? What are you hoping to accomplish, exactly, upstaging your colleagues and acting like a spoiled, petulant child in the process?

Mr. Prime Minister, you leave behind a legacy of war and a nation reeling from utter loss of faith in the establishment. Your actions have destroyed our belief in the system, they have completely eroded our trust in the state. Thanks to you, the national psyche is bruised and battered, and in a country where citizens cannot agree on anything, you have, almost singlehandedly, managed to unite us in disgust. Clearly, your acts are those of a desperate man, desperate to redeem himself in the eyes of the public, desperate to prove that he can still get the job done. Sir, you cannot, and we no longer want you to continue to try. If you have any respect in you at all – for yourself and for us, you will collect your belongings and go home. Clean up your affairs, Sir, and leave us to clean up ours.

I could make excuses about the fact that life’s been crazy lately, but what it really comes down to is that I just haven’t had the energy to write. I’ve begun new entries that never panned out, had ideas at inopportune moments and never followed through… The urge to blog had simply gone AWOL, and frankly, it’s been more than a little worrying. Even now, as I write this, I know that I’m doing it just to prove that I still can, and not because I have anything particularly scintillating to say. I’m just sort of hoping that if I can pop out a few words, the rest will flow. And no smartass comments about where you may or may not have seen my groove and when. You know who you are… 😛

In any event…

US Elections

I didn’t vote. I have the right to vote, but given that I chose to make my life here, outside of the US, I don’t feel that it’s my place to try to make an impact when I don’t have to live with the consequences of that action. Of course, some of you may say that as an Israeli, that’s not necessarily true, and that I should use my vote to help elect the more pro-Israel candidate, but I disagree. What is best for Israel may or may not be best for the US, not to mention the fact that your ideas about what is best for Israel may not gel with mine. Gila summed it up very well in this post, though I would not have voted for John McCain, had I opted to exercise my right to vote. I don’t agree with his stances and I don’t like his style. And I think the Little One would be a more qualified running mate than the one he chose, given that the Little One can see the West Bank from his house, has more international travel experience than Sarah Palin and speaks two languages. And for the record, he would never have spent $75,000 at Neiman Marcus. That being said, I did enjoy watching her cast her vote wearing jeans and a hoodie – pretty much the only thing about her entire campaign that I could relate to.

Had I voted, I would have voted for Barack Obama, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to anyone. While I’m still not sure how he will be as president, I am impressed with his intelligence and his eloquence, and that he genuinely seems to give Americans hope in ways that I can’t recall ever seeing before. I am excited by the outcome of this election, and I am moved by all that his win symbolizes. It excites me that Barack Obama has realized Martin Luther King’s dream. It excites me to know that racists across the United States are most probably still apoplectic, and will be for at least the next four years.

Oh, and for those of you who still feel the need to refer to the US President-Elect as Barack Hussein Obama, please find another hobby. It’s unnecessary, and says so much more about you than it does about him. My husband is Persian, and most of his male cousins have Muslim-sounding names. It doesn’t mean anything! And just for argument’s sake, what if he is Muslim? So what? What difference would it make? Seriously. Your racism is showing, and it’s not your most flattering feature. Get over it. Go out and find another hobby. This one’s passé, baby!